Afghan opium cultivation bouncing back amid Taliban clampdown

Poppy planting remains acold beneath pre-ban levels, United Nations reports, contempt emergence of 19 percent twelvemonth connected year.

Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation grew successful 2024 contempt a Taliban-imposed ban, according to a United Nations report.

Cultivation accrued by an estimated 19 percent this year, the study published connected Wednesday by the United Nations Office connected Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

Despite the increase, the cultivation of opium poppies – the root of the earthy worldly for overmuch of the world’s heroin – remains good beneath the levels reached earlier the Taliban clampdown successful 2022.

This year’s cultivation country amounted to conscionable 12,800 hectares (31,629 acres), a crisp driblet from the 232,000 hectares (573,284 acres) cultivated earlier the prohibition.

The prohibition connected narcotic cultivation successful April 2022 saw a 95 percent driblet successful opium farming by 2023, according to the UNODC.

“This is important further grounds that opium cultivation has so been reduced, and this volition beryllium welcomed by Afghanistan’s neighbours, the portion and the world,” said Roza Otunbayeva, peculiar typical of the secretary-general and caput of the UN Assistance Mission successful Afghanistan.

The study besides notes that cultivation has moved distant from its accepted southwest heartland to the northeastern provinces, wherever 59 percent of cultivation occurred successful 2024.

Cultivation surged by 381 percent successful these provinces implicit 2023, peculiarly successful Badakhshan, which accounted for astir of the region’s opium production.

Sustainable

The study besides notes that the prohibition has led to a spike successful opium prices, meaning that poppy cultivation remains an enticing imaginable for struggling Afghans.

Prices person stabilised astatine astir $730 per kg, up from pre-ban averages of astir $100, and importantly higher than the “20-year peak” of $408 recorded successful August 2023.

Otunbayeva stressed that agrarian communities deprived of the cardinal income root that opium poppies represented indispensable beryllium supported.

“They desperately request planetary enactment if we privation this modulation to beryllium sustainable,” she said.

Many farmers successful Afghanistan, 1 of the poorest countries successful the world, person been deed hard financially by the prohibition and person not been capable to reap the aforesaid nett from alternate crops.

Even ineligible crops are lone a short-term solution, according to the International Crisis Group, which says a absorption is needed connected occupation instauration successful non-farm industries.

In May, clashes betwixt farmers and brigades sent to destruct their poppy fields resulted successful respective deaths successful Badakhshan, a mountainous country that includes a agelong of the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan’s comparatively abbreviated borderline with China.

“With opium cultivation remaining astatine a debased level successful Afghanistan, we person the accidental and work to enactment Afghan farmers to make sustainable sources of income escaped from illicit markets,” said UNODC Director Ghada Waly.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies